WTF Wisconsin?

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled this week that committing a sex crime is not necessarily a prerequisite for ordering a convict to register as a sex offender (source). I tried reading the opinion to figure this nonsense out, but my head nearly exploded when I read the excerpted sentence below, and I had to stop.

In the present case, the parties agree that a fundamental right is not implicated . . . . (source)

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Civil Liberties, sex law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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This kid is screwed for life. The as-applied challenge should have succeeded here, and the collateral effect may damage the entire sex offender registry within Wisconsin – which, I imagine, some hyper-protective absentee parents want to keep. You know, the kind who gave their children Teddy Ruxpin in the 1980s so they wouldn’t have to do any actual parenting or supervision. I understand the rationale for having false imprisonment of a minor as a registrable offense, but it seems like there’s a gap here where there’s no requirement for a finding of underlying sexual motive. I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with Ann Walsh Brady and Shirley Abrahamson.

This is absolutely ridiculous. On several fronts this makes absolutely no sense. However, my interest lies in the “drug debt” Smith was attempting to collect. If I were a betting man, I’d say it was a marijuana debt. If someone with more access could affirm, I’d have a better footing for an argument that legalizing marijuana would have avoided this whole mess.

Or more likely others will use that as “proof” that marijuana “creates dangerous sex offenders”. Which would probably hold up under this courts loose scrutiny. With an end result of all caught with weed being entered onto the sex offender registry “due to public safety interest”